The Challenge: Better quality and faster delivery of interlibrary loan materials Penn State University Libraries' Interlibrary Loan Department (ILL) supplies loans and photocopies of materials owned by the Libraries to other academic, public, corporate, and specialized libraries. ILL obtains books, articles and other materials not held at the Pattee and Paterno Libraries from the 21 campuses and 4 branch libraries at University Park and sends them to requestors from outside the University. ILL staff noted variations in campus and branch material-delivery time to ILL as well as the quality of some of the reproduced materials.

The Solution: Structured training, better communication and increased use of technology

A team of staff from ILL and branch and campus libraries formed to study the issues. As team members were geographically dispersed, the team decided to “Fast-Track”1 the process and conducted the bulk of work in three meetings held over the summer. The team charted the workflow process within ILL and branch and campus libraries, analyzed in-house data to determine the delivery times for materials, made onsite visits to branch libraries to assess current processes, and surveyed branch and campus library staff to discern the processes used to provide materials to ILL.

Based on analysis of the survey results and the workflow processes, the team identified five main issues related to delivery time and material quality. These included:

branch and campus libraries did not clearly understand expectations about the quality of reproduced material and the necessity of quick turn-around times;

some older scanners and copiers at the branch and campus libraries produced unreadable copies;

requests from ILL for materials were not being sent to branch libraries as quickly as possible;